


Who Wants to Live Forever?

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Drugs, Fake AH Crew, M/M, Temporary Character Death, pseudo immortality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who wants to live forever?"</p><p>That's how the adds always started, the bright colors and happy music, like all the secrets to the universe had been solved, and maybe they had been. After all, people were getting up and walking away from gunshot wounds to the head, dragging themselves out of rivers and lakes, living when by all accounts they should have been dead and rotting somewhere. It didn't seem right, and yet every day it was happening. He supposed it had to only be a matter of time before something bad came out of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Wants to Live Forever?

**Author's Note:**

> So... this is a thing. Chapters will be posted once every one or two weeks, hopefully they'll be around 3k each, but no guarantees. Special thanks to everyone who helped me with developing this story! You guys are the best. Anyways, hope you enjoy!

The streets were empty, dark and desolate. There were scraps of neon colored papers advertising the newest version of the drug, claiming this one was guaranteed, this one left no scars to speak of, physical or otherwise, fluttering in the light breeze. They collected nearer to the buildings, falling into alleyways and onto roofs, soaking in the water of the sewers if they were blown that way. The cars parked in the street had papers taped to their windows or doors, some with their windows shattered. In the distance there were sirens, voices and lights and music that shook buildings as people danced inside, forgetting about the world for a few minutes of their night.

In the distance there was life, going on and on and on, no longer having to stop for anyone, not for a bullet to the head, not for a car crash or a fatal injury. People didn’t have to worry anymore, because now death wasn’t the end. The laws people abided by, the rules that said you couldn’t kill someone because it was immoral, you couldn’t shoot someone because they would leave a hole in the world or a debt no one could pay, had been all but thrown out the window when the drug was announced, when the media went crazy and suddenly the only commercials were about it, the advertisements that ran on billboards casting eerie light on a dark street were all spitting gruesome images drawn in cute caricatures that unsettled most of the people who hadn’t been swept up with the excitement of the prospect of pseudo immortality.

When people stopped having to die, for the right price, of course, things went a little out of control.

At first it had been regulated, expensive and guarded and controlled, but as more and more people demanded that they be given the drug, that they _needed_ it, mass production was necessary, overdoses happened, people died from a drug that was supposed to keep you alive no matter what, and the scientists and government heads that thought they could handle it, thought they could control the drug, found out very quickly that if the drug wasn’t created exactly right, if there was even one ingredient that was lacking it would have disastrous consequences.

Crime lords and drug rings started going after the drug with a vengeance, buying and selling it, synthesizing it to make more, but they, too, found out the same thing the government did, that if it wasn’t exactly right then it wouldn’t work like it was supposed to. Unfortunately, unlike the government, they didn’t really care. If they could make something that at least staved off the inevitable fate of a person bleeding out in an alley somewhere then it was good enough for them, they would keep selling it as long as there were still people buying it.

Scientists suddenly took the research that developed the drug and ran with it, trying to make it better, get recognition, get rich and live forever. They tried to make it more effective, making pills, injections, anything they thought that might work, but more often than not it was a pill, something you took every few days and you wouldn’t die, a prescription that most people would have thought was only science fiction before a few months ago.

Scientists started experimenting, at first with rats and other lab animals, things that couldn’t quite think for themselves, and it worked. For the animals. It became very clear very quickly that the same formula for a rat would not work for a human, so scientists started offering huge amounts of money to anyone who wanted it if they could just be their test subjects, money that usually ended up safely in the banks of the employer because the test subject had accidently died, the drug had been faulty, they signed a waver I can’t be held responsible for the decisions of another.

There was only one situation where the drug worked _too_ well. There was only one time when the combinations of chemicals all came together and made a man that couldn’t die, and when that happened it became a game of seeing just how effective it had been, how many times he could die and come back to life, and when time came to recreate the formula that had created this man the scientists found that they couldn’t do it. They decided it was some kind of fluke, that it was all a mistake, that it was something in the man and not the formula that had caused the drug to work the way it did. It gave them an excuse to keep the man with them, find out more about him in the labs.

Unfortunately, when they had gone back to run more tests, the man was gone, and soon a bounty went up for a man that couldn’t die, promising a fortune for his capture, claiming he was a criminal, someone to be brought to justice, and almost everyone believed it, since there was really no reason not to. A man that couldn’t die? Surely he had to have stolen something valuable and powerful to pull that off. Maybe he had stolen a new version of the drug that was on every billboard and commercial, maybe he had made his own that was better than anything the labs had made.

There were only a select few who knew the truth, who had been there and had seen it all happen.

A man with a hood pulled over his head, shoulders hunched and fingers lacing around the grip of a gun shoved in his pocket walked through the streets, peering through alleyways and in shadows, looking for the man he had been sent to find, the man that could give him enough money to buy the drug he so desperately needed. He had heard the reports, gossiped and talked with the druggies and gangs that frequented this place. Apparently there had been a man around here, lurking just out of sight, that wore face paint that smudged around his eyes, red and black paint covering his face and making him almost impossible to identify.

Apparently there was a man that stood up and walked away, no matter how many times you shot him, and that sounded like who he was looking for, so he really had no choice but to look for him. In hindsight, though, doing it at night probably wasn’t the best idea.

The shadows were pitch black, crawling with shapes that he couldn’t identify, some moving and some not. The streets smelled like garbage and sewage, the lights off in the apartment buildings lining the streets and he couldn’t be sure if it was because people were asleep or because they were all abandoned. The usual night sounds that were prevailing over the rest of the city were all muted here, as if playing through a recording in a different room.

Maybe that’s why he heard it when he did.

It was a scuffling, shuffling, low sound that he almost missed, and he was sure he would have if the adrenalin wasn’t rushing through him, making him focus on everything and anything as hard as he could. He pulled the gun out, waving it around, trying to find whatever was making the noise. He swung around when he heard the noise again, just catching sight of a cat running into an alley and he relaxed marginally. It was only for a second, though, before he felt the barrel of a gun press to the back of his head and he almost blacked out from sheer panic.

He gulped, dropping his own gun and putting his hands above his head, finding his throat dry and his tongue unable to form words. The only thoughts racing through his head were ones of “Oh, God, I don’t want to die, please don’t let me die today. I can’t die yet.”

When he worked up the courage to look behind him he saw the face paint, the lazy, half lidded eyes that glinted blue in the dim light, long hair falling into his face. As soon as he did, though, he felt rough hands grab him, hard boots knocking his knees in and forcing him to the ground, and still he couldn’t seem to talk. He was paralyzed by fear, by the gun still pointed at his face.

“I know you,” the man said, and his heart skipped a beat. He knew that voice, he knew who it belonged to. He hadn’t realized –

“R-Ryan?” he stuttered, his voice finally ready to start working. He heard a shuffle behind him before he heard the click of the safety disengaging. His heart beat all the harder.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice that didn’t hold much of the man he used to know, the man that had lived with him on the streets for years before one day disappearing. He hadn’t known where he had gone, but he supposed this answered a lot of questions.

He swallowed, trying to gather his thoughts, forcing himself to talk. “I was looking for you.” He stiffened as he heard him walking again, this time, though, he moved in front of him, in just the right position that the light illuminated him but not enough so that he could accurately read his expression. The gun was still by his side, he noted, and his heart skipped a beat at that.

“Why?” he asked, and by the tone he knew Ryan knew exactly what the answer was going to be, he just wanted to see if he would tell the truth.

“Why do you think?” he said, not willing to play that game, even when he was the one without a weapon, with no way to defend himself, with no respawns to speak of. If he was shot here and now he was dead, but even then the shock factor was starting to wear off, his heart quieting at least a little.

“The bounty,” he said simply, and he nodded at Ryan. The man nodded back, and before he knew what was happening the gun was pointed at him again, and the sound was ringing off the walls around them, blood dripping through the fresh hole in his chest. He tried to be surprised, to be terrified that this man had just shot him, that he was dying, but any energy he had was rapidly seeping out of him. “I’m sorry, Michael,” Ryan whispered into his ear, pressing something into his hand and the next time he blinked Ryan was gone.

He blearily looked down at what was in his hand, seeing an orange bottle with a white tag on it, the familiar emblem of Perenia staring back at him. He pressed a hand over the hole in his chest, his breathing becoming haggard and strained, and went to work opening the bottle, shaking a pill onto his hand and swallowing it whole through the blood that was dripping out of his mouth.

As black started to seep into his vision he felt his body fall sideways, growing cold and still and suddenly the world disappeared, leaving behind a void that wasn’t quite death but it certainly wasn’t life, either. It felt like he was floating, but the feeling past quickly, and soon he was falling, waking up with a jerk on the ground in an alley, the bottle still clutched in his hand, though now it was empty.

His hoodie was covered in blood and with a yelp he tore it off, slowly standing up unsteadily. He took deep, slow breaths in an attempt to calm down because he almost _died_ , holy shit, he almost died. As the shock wore off it was quickly replaced by rage, because how could Ryan _do_ that? He had shot him and left him for dead! What was wrong with him?

His legs still shaky he started moving, noticing that the sun was rising and he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. Or dead. He shivered at that thought and pushed it away, instead focusing on finding his way out of this part of the city.

**Author's Note:**

> Perenia comes from the word perennial, meaning lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite amount of time.


End file.
